Galantamine as Adjunctive Treatment for Ameliorating Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia Patients

Background: Schizophrenia is one of the most serious mental disorders presenting in adolescence. Antipsychotic drugs are the basis of treatment and clinical management of patients with schizophrenia. Despite the efficacy of risperidone as one of the antipsychotic drugs, about two-thirds of patients may experience both positive and negative symptoms during their life. Objectives: We evaluated the efficacy of galantamine as an adjunctive treatment for ameliorating the negative symptoms of schizophrenia patients. Methods: This is a randomized double-blind phase II clinical trial study carried out on schizophrenia patients admitted to a psychiatric department. The patients were randomly divided into two equal groups using the block randomization method. The intervention group received 24 mg galantamine plus 2 - 6 mg risperidone, and controls received 24 mg placebo along with 2 - 6 mg risperidone. Neurological tests included the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) and the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) at baseline and weeks 2, 4, and 8 after treatment. Results: We studied 28 patients. The mean age of the participants was 44 ± 3.1 and 47 ± 2.7 years in the placebo and intervention groups, respectively. The PANSS score significantly decreased over study time. The intervention group showed significantly greater reduction slopes than the control group (P = 0.034). Alogia (P = 0.0016) and attention (P = 0.0108) reduced more intensely in the intervention group than in the control group. Conclusions: Our findings indicated that galantamine could significantly affect the severity of the symptoms of schizophrenia patients. The findings suggest galantine as an appropriate adjunctive treatment for ameliorating negative symptoms, especially attention and alogia.